Morning Shorts

A “flash index” of the state’s corporate, personal and sales tax receipts was at 96.3 last month compared to 97 in January, but J. Fred Giertz said the state has avoided the worst of the national recession.

Any figure below 100 on the index indicates the state’s economy is shrinking

“So far, Illinois seems to have been affected less severely by the recession compared to the rest of the country,” said Giertz. “During 2008, Illinois’ unemployment rate rose 1.6 percentage points to 7.2 percent, while the rate for the whole country rose 2.3 percentage points, ending the year at 7.2 percent.”

Alderman Richard Mell… said, “People will not want to move into this neighborhood; people will not want to invest in this neighborhood. If they drive down the street and see 5 or 6 buildings like this, they’re going to look for somewhere else to live.”

An explosion of failed mortgage loans in moderate-income and middle-class Chicago communities last year helped drive new foreclosure filings to nearly 20,000 here, a report released Monday by the nonprofit National Training and Information Center found.

The report also revealed that 75 percent of the mortgage loans were adjustable-rate or other high-risk loan products.

New foreclosure filings numbered 19,943 in 2008, nearly double the 10,673 filings reported in 2006. Eighty-six percent of the mortgages were made within the last three years.

President Barack Obama has declared nine southern Illinois counties as disaster areas after a severe winter storm in late January.

The declaration makes federal funding available to state and local governments and some nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis. The money can be used for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the storm from Jan. 26-28.

The Daley administration has signed another $5 million public relations contract — bringing the citywide total to 11 firms and $55 million — to augment the highly controlled message coming out of City Hall.

Mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard insisted last fall that not a penny would be paid to outside spin doctors until Chicago’s budget crisis is over.

A loyal campaign worker in the powerful Hispanic Democratic Organization had been rewarded with a city job, so when a call came to cut the grass at the home of Chicago Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez, he allegedly did as he was told.

Comments

IL was in the tank before the recession gained steam. That we did not decline as much as other states is not a testament to our economic health as much as it is an indicator of long term economic stagnation.

Illinois historically goes into recessions later than most other states and comes out of them later. This has been explained by economists in the past as being largely due to our industry mix. This was even true during the ’80s recession that was seen as the first “rolling” recession that moved across the country from the coasts to the middle in phases. Illinois still experienced a recessionary time-lag compared to other midwestern states.

So, don’t take their comments as indicating good news on the home front.

Year over year, Feb was a disaster. Corporate income tax is almost non-existant and personal and sales tax were down about 10%. That looks pretty bad to me because I don’t think we’ve seen the bottom yet. I wish it wasn’t so…